


Brave New World

by Daegaer



Series: For Art's Sake [4]
Category: Weiss Kreuz
Genre: 1920s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Artists, Gen, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-09-17
Packaged: 2017-11-14 12:24:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daegaer/pseuds/Daegaer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1922 London, a young artist finds a new model he wishes to paint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brave New World

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://indelicateink.livejournal.com/profile)[**indelicateink**](http://indelicateink.livejournal.com/) in our art/fic exchange! Thanks to [](http://puddingcat.livejournal.com/profile)[**puddingcat**](http://puddingcat.livejournal.com/) for beta-reading and [](http://new-kate.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://new-kate.livejournal.com/)**new_kate** for forms of Russian names.

I stare in distaste out of the window. The street beyond is as uninteresting as the room in which I stand. Without, the day is damp and grey, miserable children following their nannies on healthy walks that will give them sore throats and running noses. Within, the room is oppressive in its floral swags upon the drapes, the relentlessly pious samplers adorning the walls, each embroidered by a more tedious niece of my landlady. I do not wish to be reminded that the Almighty is watching me, nor that salvation waits upon His grace. I do not think that I believe in Him any more, though in that I am not being modern in my thoughts. It is merely that the army sent me to France.

I would like to replace the samplers with something more interesting, but the clumsy stitchwork of the tedious young ladies is sacrosanct. _It doesn't matter_ , I think, for I know only the most insipid of my own work would be allowed upon the walls. I am sick of my old work now; it shows nothing real, nothing meaningful. I turn from the window, picking up a sketchbook from months before. I don't so much flick through it as turn unerringly to the pages I seek. A narrow, triangular face looks up at me, the wide-set eyes knowing and mocking. I turn through the sketches, seeing again how I changed him slowly from human to faun. I close my eyes in frustration moments before the knock on my door. It always comes just as the nearby church bells strike one.

"Mr Crawford? Luncheon is served."

"Yes," I say. My landlady does not allow me to go unfed, no matter my own preferences. I imagine my mother confiding all her worries to her friend, her friend writing to her cousin – and so I am called to eat, like a boy who forgets the time. _The poor boy is delicate; the war, you know -_ I obediently leave my room and go downstairs.

I hear little of what is said during luncheon, replying by rote when I am spoken to. Yes, the weather is dismal, although it could no doubt be worse. Yes, I am well, although I wish I could work more effectively. Yes, I will be going to work on my latest painting after luncheon.

My trip through the wet streets does nothing to lift my spirits. I see yet again in my mind's eye the sunlight glinting on bright red hair as the only real subject I have ever painted stalks away from me in fury. I do not know how I could have been so stupid as to have allowed him to leave, or to have allowed anyone see my reactions to the war, even to the slightest degree. He killed none of my friends, he is far too young to have been there. I don't even hate the men who _did_ kill my friends, I tell myself, so why should _he_ think I would ever think less of him? Such ridiculous justifications are useless, I think, remembering the split second of hurt in his face before blank anger took over.

I bury my thoughts in work, for although I do not think highly of my watercolours and landscapes, I have had some small success in selling them to the friends and acquaintances of my landlady and so I may, in all honesty, write to my parents and tell them I am doing better than they ever thought I could, and make my way with my art. _I am not improving_ , I think in despair. _If I gave up these ridiculous, childish -_ I turn away in disgust and pick up a tube of oils. I had never painted seriously in oils before last summer and that painting to which I return again and again. I put down the tube and go to lift the painting from its place against the wall. I stare at it, the boy staring back, his painted eyes meeting mine in unsmiling, feral challenge. Though I created it, it unsettles me to see what I have made of him. Creature of fantasy though he is, he is yet more real than anything else I have ever painted.

I take a new canvas and prepare it, my mind as blank as the surface. No more wasting time. I look through the sketchbook, considering. Hours later I have the small canvas roughed out, the boy caught looking aside as if a sudden noise has drawn his attention. I have enough of the oils left in good condition for one small portrait; it will allow me to allay the unease I have felt since he left. I have found him nowhere, not in the restaurant or café to which I brought him, not in the whole area. _He must live somewhere nearby_ , I think, as fruitlessly as ever, _how else would he and his family be known to be German?_ No matter how often I have walked the streets of the area near my studio I have never once seen that bright hair.

Over the next days I work on my new painting, feeling better than I have for months. It will show the boy, a faun once more, half-caught within the frame and obscured by the verdant forests of his wilderness home. That last is a necessity, as I have discovered that most of the oils I have left are greens and browns. At least I do not have to think this time of whether I shall hide his modesty behind leaves or not, for the painting shall show only part of his face and chest as he turns away from the profane gaze of the viewer to the innocent wilderness of the forest once more. I laugh at myself a little at that, for _innocent_ seems a poor word to describe anything to do with him.

The work gets me through days of rain and deep apathy at the condition of the world. I make myself smile at my landlady and her dull nieces when they come to call. Perhaps they are looking for an American husband, I think, and find my laughter is for once real as I think of my mother's face if I should come home with a bride almost ten years older than I.

"Marriage is a bourgeois institution," I say in the safe silence of my room. "Art is what counts."

I should burn my older canvasses; it would be something to drive away the dampness of the early spring in a great, pagan conflagration. I don't, of course. I am instead properly grateful to sell them at the cost of the materials alone to the ladies who pity me. I try to avoid such feminine company as much as possible, and have discovered in myself an almost sixth sense that warns when ladies who have lost sons are due to call. I cannot face such women and I suppose they are not really pleased to see my living face.

It is during one excursion to spare myself such company that I see the poster proclaiming an exhibition of art for the people. My eye is caught by the vibrant colours and strong lines of the abstract shapes. I have never seen anything like it. My eye keeps returning to it as I pick out a few new oils I have decided I cannot do without. The poster proclaims new work by Sergei Plekhanov and other members of the Rosenkreuz group. I've never heard of them, but then my art education in America did not touch on current European work. I keep looking at the poster as I pay, the announcement of art for the people and the Russian name connecting in my mind. This is, perhaps, a group of Bolshevik artists. My family would in no way approve of me visiting such an exhibition – the thought is enough to make me pull out a small sketchbook and note down the date and address. Have I not come here to experience something new, to make myself something other than I was? I pause, looking at the lines in smaller print that exhort the reader to break free of any commitment ad to submit work to be shown along with that of the Rosenkreuz group. _I could never submit my landscapes_ , I think, seeing again their sentimentality, their adherence to convention. _The_ other _paintings_ , I think, _the_ real _ones_. I shy away almost at once from the thought of others seeing the painting from the summer before. It seems to reveal too much, somehow, the boy's fierce, feral expression saying to the viewer, _I see into you. Your secrets are not hidden from me._ What does it say of _me_ , I wonder, that I created such an image? _Coward_ , I tell myself at once. _You pathetic coward. You cannot so much as face women who lost their sons while you live on and now you hide your work, you paint for no other eyes than your own? Is this no more than a_ hobby _for you? Go home, work in a respectable job! You will never redeem yourself_.

I shall submit both images of the boy, I know with sudden certainty. How ridiculous to be prudish or to fear bourgeois disappointment. I make myself smile; it is hardly likely that many members of the bourgeoisie will be at such an exhibition, I risk nothing. I need not be brave to submit my work. _This is a new world_ , I tell myself. _Art will heal the wounds of the past – Berlin is full of artists of all sorts, is it not? And you have not mocked your friends; this is no German soldier you have painted, but an otherworldly creature._ I write that same afternoon, asking that I might exhibit two works, and return to my paints with renewed vigour.

 

I am satisfied at last with the smaller image. The boy's attention seems to have been caught by a sudden noise or movement. He turns towards it with a fluid grace I am a little astonished I had the facility to capture, not having seen him in the flesh for so many months. I have shown a little more of him than I originally intended, for now I have him push aside a branch to allow him a better view of whatever he sees out of frame. Only one finger is visible to the tip, ending in a sharp claw. His gaze is certainly not the innocent look I first envisaged, but one that leaves the viewer unsure as to whether the boy is enchanted with what he sees or whether he intends to rip it asunder. Once again I am disconcerted at the truth in the image and must force myself to bring the real boy to mind again. Why should someone known for so short a time hold such power over me? I think of the sly smile, the touch of his hand warm on my wrist, the scent of sun-warmed skin and hair as he leant towards me. _It's his bone structure_ , I think. _It's an interesting face, good for portraits_. I cover both canvasses, as if protecting the world from his gaze.

I bring my framed canvasses to the appointed address on the morning of the exhibition. I should perhaps have brought them the night before but a strange melancholy had fallen over me at the thought of them left alone amidst others' work. Now I curse my fancies as I nearly fall from the platform of the omnibus and am forced to caper awkwardly to the path, desperate to lose neither my footing nor my grasp on the string about my paintings.

The building is a medium sized edifice that seems more suited to some kind of manufacturing work than the display of art. I stand irresolute inside the door, looking over a spacious work floor over which a glass-fronted office looks down. A few men and women hurry about, fixing thin wooden screens firmly against stacked-up crates to create temporary surfaces for hanging work.

"Excuse me," I say to a tall man, bare-headed and in shirt-sleeves, struggling with one such screen. "My name is Crawford. I wrote last week –"

"Put those down and help me with this damn thing," he says. His voice is deep, his accent very foreign.

I hurry to obey, carefully placing my paintings where they will not be trampled before helping him move the screen into place. It is an awkward, unwieldy thing but much light than I first thought. Of course, I think, looking from the corner of my eye at the man beside me, it may be merely that he is very strong. He is a little taller than me, broad shouldered and well made. He hammers in the last nail and stands back, one large hand pushing back the fair hair from his brow.

"So, that is done," he says and turns so quickly I step back. "You had canvasses, yes? What is it you said your name was?"

"Crawford," I say, and manage not to move as he slaps my shoulder in a casual manner as if we are fellow workers.

"Plekhanov. You helped put this up – use it! Leave some space for some other latecomer if you can, but hang your work as you wish." He tosses me a box of sturdy nails and a length of wire, then turns away with a careless wave. I look after him as he strolls away, lighting a cigarette as he goes. _Plekhanov_ , I think. This is his exhibition.

My brief labours have earned me a good spot. Not the prime positions taken by some already-hung works and two gigantic abstract sculptures, but I will not be overlooked in some dark corner. I take a deep breath and unwrap my work. Only one other person has ever seen the first, only my eyes have ever seen the second. For a moment I want to keep them to myself – I can see quite clearly how others will look at them as mere curiosities or fantasies, not seeing the truth I have made of them. _Fool_ , I think in self-mockery, and carefully position them on the flat surface. They look good. They look – right. Together they make a pleasing composition; the larger with its lush colours, the brightest of which is the boy's hair, the smaller with its more muted shades and the shadowed, disconcerting expression upon his face. I sigh; I cannot stand here gazing at my own work all day. I should perhaps help someone else, make the acquaintance of others of this group. No one seems to need me as I look around and my stock of courage dwindles again at the thought of simply interrupting someone for the sake of conversation. Instead I remove myself to a teahouse for the next hour and a half before walking the streets for another hour until the exhibition has opened and is underway, finally returning to wander round aimlessly looking at other people's work.

 

The massive sculptures are Plekhanov's I find. I walk around one, trying to make sense of its confusing outline. It seems from one angle to be a weapon, from another an abstract human form, bound together in a work of malevolent power. I cannot decide if its apparent components are meant to be held in some vice-like invisible grip that crushes them into one, or if they are about to explode outwards with unimaginable force. It is very modern, I have to admit. The card pinned to the dais on which it stands does not help me at all, being hand-written in strong, incomprehensible Russian letters.

I move on and spend time staring at five small works in gouache arranged in such a way as to indicate they form a single scene, like windows onto a London street. When I look closer I see that though taken together they show a view of London stark enough to satisfy any proponent of social reform, as individual works they are something else, unwholesome in a different way. Here, a dog run over in the street has apparently been partly butchered, there, a beggar child holding out an imploring hand to a passer-by has seven fingers of a sheen that says _scales_ rather than _human skin_. The shapes flying over the rooftops are on second glance too misshapen to be birds –

"You seem to like the effect," a woman's voice says.

"This is London by Dante," I say without turning.

"By Lin, rather," she says, and her voice contains a smile. I turn to see a Chinese woman beside me, amusement in her eyes. She points out a neat Chinese character in each panel, then holds out a hand. "By me. Lin. Silvia Lin."

"Miss Lin, Bradley Crawford," I say, taking her hand. Her grip is not limp like a lady's; she shakes my hand firmly, like a man. "It's a startling vision, Miss Lin." I imagine my mother's expression if she should see me at this moment, discussing art with a woman to whom she would show such distant, withering politeness and feel a smile spreading across my face. (You think I make my family sound dull and conventional in their social views, I know. They are).

"It's no more than the truth," she says. "What hides beneath the surface – you know that already."

My smile turns a little helpless and she takes pity on me, slipping an arm through mine and pulling me closer to her work. "The mundane surface covers truths both wonderful and terrible," she says, pointing at the child, pitiful until one sees that it is monstrous, the swirling pigeons that are in truth something much larger and dreadful seen from far off. "That's what art reveals, that's what we of the Rosenkreuz group want to show others. Isn't it?" She squeezes my arm affectionately and I colour a little. Her hair is sharply bobbed under a very modern cloche hat; I feel quite out of place beside her.

"Miss Lin, I haven't been in London so very long, I'm not a member of your group –" I start and she raises her eyebrows at me.

"No?" she says. "Aren't those two forest scenes yours? Painted by the Bradley Crawford who wrote asking so politely if he could exhibit with us?"

"I thought that was what was intended – if I offended anyone with my request –"

She is laughing now. "Mr Crawford, no apologies are needed. You are more nearly one of us than you know. Come, what are you missing in my scenes?"

I peer closer, seeing London change once again from a grimly realistic scene to one of morbid fantasy. The butchered dog, the monstrous child, the flying creatures, the knot of eyeless office workers – I pause, looking again at the final panel, at the young man buying flowers from a fresh-faced girl, a long, slim-bladed knife held behind his back. My mouth is dry. For months I have seen his face everywhere in my imagination and now I almost overlook him. Only a fraction of that sly face is on view, but I know him. I _know_ him.

I try to think of something to say that will not reduce me to sounding a desperate fool.

"You have already had dealings with us," she says. "You are not unlike us."

I feel a little light-headed. _I'm being watched_ , I think. _If I turn around surely he'll -_

She pulls me round, still laughing as I come face to face with that narrow, sly face, that suspicious and mocking gaze that has haunted my sleep for months.

"Mr Crawford," Silvia Lin says, "I think you already know Schuldig."


End file.
